The trouble with McKeever was that he was playing the game too closely.  Long before, it had been a maxim with the chief that a good gambler should only lose by a small margin.  That maxim McKeever, playing for the first time for what he felt were important stakes in the eyes of Fernand, followed too closely.  Stacking the cards, with the adeptness which years of practice had given to him, he never raised the amount of his opponent’s hand beyond its own order.  A pair was beaten by a pair, three of a kind was simply beaten by three of a kind of a higher order; and, when a full house was permitted by his expert dealing to appear to excite the other gamblers, he himself indulged in no more than a superior grade of three of a kind.

Half a dozen times these coincidences happened without calling for any distrust on the part of Ronicky Doone, but eventually he began to think.  Steady training enabled his eyes to do what the eyes of the ordinary man could not achieve, and, while to Jerry Smith all that happened in the deals of McKeever was the height of correctness, Ronicky Doone, at the seventh deal, awakened to the fact that something was wrong.

He hardly dared to allow himself to think of anything for a time, but waited and watched, hoping against hope that Jerry Smith himself would discover the fraud which was being perpetrated on them.  But Jerry Smith maintained a bland interest in the game.  He had won between two and three hundred, and these winnings had been allowed by McKeever to accumulate in little runs, here and there.  For nothing encourages a gambler toward reckless betting so much as a few series of high hands.  He then begins to believe that he can tell, by some mysterious feeling inside, that one good hand presages another.  Jerry Smith had not been brought to the point where he was willing to plunge, but he was very close to it.

McKeever was gathering the youngster in the hollow of his hand, and Ronicky Doone, fully awake and aware of all that was happening, felt a gathering rage accumulate in him.  There was something doubly horrible in this cheating in this place.  Ronicky set his teeth and watched.  Plainly he was the chosen victim.  The winnings of Jerry Smith were carefully balanced against the losses of Ronicky Doone.  Hatred for this smooth-faced McKeever was waxing in him, and hatred in Ronicky Doone meant battle.

An interruption came to him from the side.  It came in the form of a brief rustling of silk, like the stir of wind, and then Ruth Tolliver’s coppery hair and green-blue eyes were before him—­Ruth Tolliver in an evening gown and wonderful to look at.  Ronicky Doone indulged himself with staring eyes, as he rose to greet her.  This, then, was her chosen work under the regime of John Mark.  It was as a gambler that she was great.  The uneasy fire was in her eyes, the same fire that he had seen in Western gold camps, in Western gaming houses.  And the delicate, nervous fingers now took on a new meaning to him.